The present invention relates to a vehicle door of the type comprising a box structure in an inner panel of which there is provided an opening for the passage of components, such as a window raiser mechanism, which are mounted on a support plate so shaped as to be applied in a sealed manner on the periphery of the opening, said support plate constituting with said components a sealed module.
In the event of a lateral collision, it is known to improve the safety of the passengers by causing a thrust to be exerted on the pelvis of the passengers in a manner compatible with the morphological characteristics as soon as possible upon impact. The object is to ensure that the contact between the passenger and the door does not occur at the level of the trunk which constitutes a region weaker than that of the pelvis of the passenger.
For this purpose, it is known to fill the interior of the door and the interior of the trim panel with a material whose behaviour is adapted to the compression. In this way, upon impact, the deformation of the outer skin of the door compresses the filling material. This compression is transmitted to the trim panel which consequently has a tendency to penetrate the passenger compartment right at the start of the deformation of the door. The trim panel comes in contact with the pelvis of the passenger and exerts a thrust thereon.
In order to avoid injuring the passenger the filling material must have a limited resistance to compression so that the resulting force is compatible with the resistance of the hip of a standard person; for example, this force must be less than the force exerted on the hip of a dummy tolerated by a pending European standard relating to lateral shocks or impacts.
It is also known to form a pelvis thrust structure by means of paddings of rigid foam or alveolate plastics material having a shape and density imparting thereto the desired resistance to compression, these paddings being disposed on both sides of the sheet metal forming the sealed module. These arrangements have a drawback in that they require at least two parts, namely the sheet metal support and a pad, and more commonly three parts, namely the sheet metal support and two pads disposed on opposite sides of the latter.
An object of the invention is to provide a vehicle door in which the pelvis thrust means is constructed in a more simple manner by reducing the number of parts required while retaining the same resistance to compression as the aforementioned known constructions.
According to the invention, the support plate of the components has a dishing region situated at the level of the articulation points of the hips of the passengers so as to constitute a pelvis thrust means in the event of a lateral impact on the door.
According to one embodiment of the invention, the dishing region is press formed and comprises a group of bosses oriented in the direction toward the window glass and interconnected by planar areas of the sheet on the side thereof adjacent to the passengers.
In this embodiment, the invention therefore permits achieving the pelvis thrust function without addition of any additional part to the sheet of the module.
In another embodiment of the invention, the dishing is formed by a local deformation of a sheet constituting the support plate and by fixing on the periphery of said deformation a press-formed second sheet having a profile complementary to said deformation of the first-mentioned sheet.
In this case a single part is added to the sheet to constitute the pelvis thrust means. This type of embodiment is easier to manufacture than that of the press-formed single sheet.
Further features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings which illustrate two embodiments of the invention by way of non-limitative examples.